She woke me with a finger to my chest. “You were snoring,” she said. She explained how cute it was and attempted to imitate it. Of course it sounded like a whale choking on an elephant, but I smiled up at her and asked her how she was. “Tease-ready,” I thought she said. Then she retrieved a steaming mug from the end table, a drink that smelled like vanilla and feet.

Slowly she turned, her immense rear crashing through the still bedroom air and plummeting to the bed like a planet fallen from orbit. Even at my distance, it was a frightening gesture. The mattress only sank slightly beneath me, only slightly tilting me toward those enormous tan buttocks in the center of a memory foam crater.

Tonight she wore a black thong and a black sports bra. Some women hate those, some women love them. Same with men, but who cares what they think—they’ll clue you in whether you like it or not. Her full mane of curly chestnut and mahogany spilled down her caramel back, hiding her bra but not reaching her thong. If I got up and ran, if the quilt were a tarmac, I could probably leap to ricochet myself off one bulging buttock and wrap my fists in her highlighted tips. But that would only take me away from my duty.

She sips loudly, from behind the monolith of her body. I stretch my calves and hips, breathing deeply, killing time as she waits for the temperature of her tea to become bearable. She doesn’t speak to me and I don’t call out to her. That is entirely beside why I’m here. What little she’s said tonight is a testament to how deeply into her graces I have wormed myself. This, I believe, is because I take such pride in my work.

The room is dark, or dimming. The drapes cover a near-perfect blackness, and a single lamp beside the bed holds an old and faithful incandescent bulb. The carpet is plush: I could not hear hard shoes on it, but her weight pounds through stubby legs and rock-like bone to bludgeon the floorboards beneath it, even in bare feet. Those feet, they must be so tough, such dense calluses building up, I wonder if they’ve cracked… but that is not my duty. I don’t believe she has anyone for foot duty. I’m not concerned.

I’ve begun stretching my upper body when she sets her mug down once more. Instantly I’m on my feet and jogging away from her. I’m not fleeing: I’m giving her room so I can do my job. She doesn’t glance at me as she draws one smooth, round knee up and lets her pudgy body partly sink, partly topple to the mattress. I watch her round and shiny shoulders, padded so you never see the muscles tense. I watch the rolls along her sides, velvety and inviting. There—she stretches her legs off into the distance, huge thighs that press together even as she spreads her legs, and ecstatically bulging calves, unstoppable and fierce. So much raw, relentless power in those legs, carrying her around all day, along miles of sidewalk, up and down dozens of flights of stairs. I bet she could cave a man’s chest in with one clean kick.

She stretches out across her mattress, languid and ponderous.

Not mine, of course. She could crack my ribs between her thumb and forefinger. She could shatter my chest by pressing me to the roof of her mouth with her tongue. This will never happen, of course, because I am the best at my job and she values this.

Her plump, glowing arms encircle beneath her shaggy head. “Nighty-night, Ívarr,” she purrs over her shoulder. I don’t know her name, there’s no reason for me to. But I’m glad she reminds me of mine, because sometimes I forget. That is how good I am at my job, and that’s how long it’s been since I’ve seen another person.

No. I don’t need other people. There are no other people. There is nothing outside that window, and she disappears when she leaves this house. She comes into being every evening, from nothing to being, and she wakes me up to do my job. She is my World. She is my entire World, and I want nothing else but to do the best job I can.

I stand by and observe her, just outside the sunken perimeter that cradles my World. Her heavy eyebrows go up, go up, furrow, and then relax. Her eyes open for a moment, unfocused. They glance at the pillow beside her, and they wander down to me. I’m almost ashamed that she has wasted her sight upon me, but she smiles. I can see her cheek tug up behind her shoulder. Her massive head rotates upon her forearms, and she reaches out to kill the light, and then she rests again.

This is when I wait, as badly as I want to get to work. I have to wait in the darkness as my eyes adjust, because that’s part of what makes me the best. I can do my job well anywhere, in any conditions. I also have to wait until her breathing slows down and goes heavy. Some nights this takes longer than others, depending on the day she’s had, what she was doing before she reappeared in the house. Not that there is anything to do out there, where nothing exists. I can reconcile with the paradox.

And I wait, and I wait. I’m surprised at how much light there actually was behind the curtains, light that now hesitantly flows into the room. The curtains glow, an acute triangle rises from the floor up the wall, and the long and graceful curve of her buttocks glisten in a dusting of light.

Already I can see my duty. Already, my keen eyes pick out my task, taking inventory and building a map. I nod to myself, maybe I even speak to myself, counting and plotting. But I don’t make a move until…

There, it begins. She pauses with the slightest gasp in her sinuses, just a brief pause in her breathing.

Her breath catches a second time. I stand up and head up to the pillow she doesn’t use. I walk slowly, though she couldn’t hear me if I stomped, not on the quilt, not on the floor, but I still need to listen.

There is the first wheeze. I can picture the air slipping in a silvery ribbon up that big, round nostril and flowing into her skull, running down her sinus with some obstruction before dumping into her glistening, ringed throat. I know what it looks like because it haunts my dreams. She showed me once, right before she remembered I am the best at my job.

Moments pass before anything else. When she falls silent I wonder if she’s going to raise that massy head and adjust her position, fitful and petulant, seeking that perfect, elusive position to provide the most rest. Tonight, however, she cuts loose with a roaring snore, and I sigh with relief. Now it’s my turn.

From beneath the pillow I pull out a large plastic jar. Large to me: it’s as big as my torso, with leather straps glued at four nearly equidistant points to X over my chest. I slip into it and heft it on my back. It’s a little cold, even through the plastic jar, through my tunic: it’s full of hydrogen peroxide, most of which I’ll use tonight. I thrust both arms under the edge of the immense pillow and drag out my satchel, a large bag I stitched up myself. It likewise holds a few tools of my own design: a Q-tip spear with a swab on one end and a point where I stripped the rolls of paper away; a piece of scrap metal I hammered with a stone into a trowel, complete with leather-wrapped handle; a medium-length, slender hook with a similar handle. Brief inventory complete, I slog across the bed once more to her hip.

I grip the waistband of her thong, thrust out my hips, and fold myself in half to walk up her hip. The perimeter is so wide here, she’s nearly a wall before she’s a hillside. I surface upon her lower back, sparing a moment to glance up the narrow ditch of her spine. Such beautiful landscape, dimly lit in this cool bedroom, now warming as her metabolism rises in sleep. But I’m not in charge of her back. That might be someone else; maybe she hasn’t hired anyone for it. I do not permit myself a moment of pride in the notion that I could be her only hireling. What’s important is that I am in charge of her ass.

Ívarr, she called me. Ívarr.

I tried to call her “World” once, because what can I name her but what she is? She laughed but said it was an insult, and the only thing that stayed my hand from opening my throat with my trowel was the knowledge that anyone else doing my job would be a grievous insult to her ass. I was the only thing that stood between the sacred, rolling landscape of her buttocks and abject barbarism.

She doesn’t need me, but she does. I can reconcile with the paradox.

My bare foot is privileged to touch the tough, smooth landscape of her ass. I close my eyes in a moment of thanks that she has granted me this demesne; I am likewise thankful that my skills are such that none may surpass, and thus ever may I tread these hills.

She lies sweetly in slumber as I perambulate the broadly sweeping hillsides of her rear.

Where was it… I saw it from the bed…

Yes, a large and satisfying boil. Look at it, white-headed with a ring of angry pink. Oh, this poor woman, it must’ve been annoying her all day. I kneel upon her skin, and it gives very slightly beneath my knees. Over my head I pull the jar straps and set it aside the dermatological blight, before extracting all my tools.

The lid is a tricky balance. It has to be tight enough to keep the peroxide fresh, or else I’m just hauling around the cleanest water anyone’s seen. It has to be loose enough to grant me access to it. But if I were not the best at my job, this would be an impossible problem. As it is I loosen the lid and rest the Q-tip spear beside it, in preparation. Taking up the trowel, I saw with one keen edge into the dead skin containing the boil. One neat incision across the top, just press down firmly and draw back with resolution, and there. Look at that: it split open in all eagerness. Nodding, I spin the lid and set it gently aside, dousing my hands in the peroxide.

Here, I must be careful so as not to wake my World. I can call her that in my head, it’s fine. My fingers are deft and slender as I thrust them into the incision, widening them to gently probe the inflamed pit with the backs of my knuckles. When my fingertips touch at the bottom, the creamy pus risen above my wrists, then I lace my hands and slowly, slowly withdraw. The thick white blood cells flow around my palms until only the kernel remains, a stout nugget of solidified fats and antibodies. The body waged a little battle and lost, allowing this carbuncle an unsightly home in the landscape of my beautiful World. But now I hold it in my hands, and it would be enough to stash it in my bag for disposal, but I have a grudge against this metabolic aberration. I scowl at it, I whisper my hate at it, and I make an example of it by wringing it between my fists. It shudders, then snaps with satisfying surrender. Sneering, I stuff the halves into my bag and wipe most of the gunk on my pants before rinsing off in the peroxide.

I dip the tip of the paper spear into the clear liquid and gently insert it into the angry wound, a betrayed mouth of reddened, toothless gums. I extend my perceptions down the half-Q-tip and into the pit, envisioning how the soaked, tapered end paints healing fluid against walls that even now dribble with pus in their inadequate protective response. The pus will thin out and, thanks to me, there will be no infection. It could close up with a tiny little scab before she showers tomorrow.

And why? Because I’m only… the best.

Off we go. I saw a lump over here, I think. It’s a blackhead. Before the night is done, I will pop and flush out six blackheads. If they’re shallow, I can pinch them out with my bare hands; if they’re real beamers, then I must finger out the waxy plug and insert my hook to its depths. The body of this tool is long and slender, the hook is a tiny curve right at the end: it goes in, I twist it back and forth to disrupt any connective tissue, and out comes the kernel with a spiteful splash. It is my pleasure to administer the hydrogen peroxide, my way of apologizing to my World’s glorious butt on behalf of an unthinking and hateful existence.

I stretch my legs and traverse one immense buttock. My World sleeps very soundly tonight, so there is no scrambling to remain atop the rotating landscape as she rolls to her side. There is no desperate plunge into the crack of her ass, seeking just enough space to breathe, as she flumps to her back (when the real snoring begins). There is only me taking my time to worship the hide beneath my soles. What I wouldn’t give to…

No. I shouldn’t think of it.

But who else is there…

Fidelity. Fidelity to my precious and beloved World prevents me.

But is not the mind the last refuge? Never speak it, never hint at it, but one must be absolutely free within one’s mind…

Frowning deeply, I unhinge my thoughts as I head down to the sharp tuck of her buttock as it meets her thigh. This area is usually good for ingrown hairs. My eyes are attuned to the darkness as I sit cross-legged and reach around to pick off that milky scrim of skin, then pluck the curly hair and savor how it unspools from within her flesh. This is so much fun, I wish I could share it with her, but part of my professionalism is that she never notices my work.

Which makes it hard now to confess this indulgent thought.

My demesne is absolutely beautiful. It is gorgeous, it is a landscape of primal desire. At the most, after a particularly good job, I will permit myself to pull off my tunic and my crude leggings, both crusty with pus, and lie bare as Goddess made me upon the peak of one caramel-colored hillside. I may lie upon my back and stretch upon the gentle curve; I may lie upon my front and kiss, kiss, kiss the riotously beautiful landscape.

Only once did I venture between the peaks, to the narrow and plunging fissure between her buttocks. I held myself back before I defiled her majestic anus, not with my glance, nor with my touch. Were I to do this, without her knowing and express permission, I would indeed end myself. She would wake up to a tiny body with a nearly severed tiny head, and she would trust that this was the only reasonable response to a serious moral lassitude. And though she dump my useless little body into the wastebasket, my eternal punishment should be that my replacement could never do as fine a job as me.

But there was this one zit. It was a combination job, part whitehead and part ingrown hair. I hooted and cheered, nearly danced a jig but for the fear of disturbing my World. Eagerly I set to work, hunching my shoulders as I dug in with relish.

I’d done everything right. I sanitized the theater of operation, my fingers were wriggly and adroit, but that zit… it fought me. It would not give up its treasure. I plucked at the middle of the hair, and it tugged on a nerve. My World whimpered. I froze in terror, unwilling to breathe for a solid minute until I heard that gratifying grumble as her uvula danced in the breeze upon the back of her tongue.

Pursing my lips, I rinsed out the cavity, hoping to flush out most of the pus and begin to break up the kernel, but it was not to be. The walls began to inflame and swell, closing up my access. At this time I hadn’t my hook, but this was when it was born: I wrought the prototype out of a paperclip, nearly shattering my own molars upon the cheap metal rod to approximate the shape I needed. Dousing it in peroxide, I slid it inside until I felt the bottom of the kernel, but that follicle with the raw nerve gave me pause. What was I to do?

Desperate with the threat of failure, I apologized to my World, gave the paperclip a hard wrench, and jerked the hook quickly out of her buttock. The kernel dislodged halfway, and I was able to snake my hand beneath it, only to find it anchored by the unruly hair! My fingers bled as I worried at the paperclip, pinching and prying until I wrested a meager triangle of chrome from its bend. This I slipped beneath the kernel between index and middle fingers, and I held my breath as I tried to envision sawing at this errant hair.

Suddenly my fingers swung freely. Gasping with surprise, I embraced the kernel and slid it out, severed hair and all! Yet I had left the tool in the patient: I puckered my fingers into a bird’s beak of a fist and stuffed it into the aggravated tissues, nearly weeping with frustration as I fumbled around in search of that horrid chrome shard. I found it, but not before slicing my own fingers in several places. But at least my World was free of this biological violation.

Until I introduced another. My mind reddened with vengeance, I’m ashamed to admit I pulled down my pants and mashed my sexual member into a bludgeoning instrument. This I thrust into the angry wound, riding along on a thin film of pus to carry me into the inflamed tissues that clenched and sealed around my member. My laugh was a growl as I punished the wound for its audacity. My hips banged and pounded into one miserable square quarter-inch of my beloved World’s ass cheek. It trembled, oh, how I shook her buttock with the ferocity of my thrusts! Laughing, swearing, wreaking my perverse vengeance upon the cavity of her zit until I filled it not with healing hydrogen peroxide but the stinging shame of my emission.

I rolled to my back and cried. I considered hurling myself into the Tartarus of her ass crack and shoving my head into her anus. The sphincter should reflexively tighten around my neck, defeating my attempts at extrication, and in minutes I would rightfully asphyxiate.

Hah. Ass-phxiate. I dislike myself.

Obviously I did not. I finished my rounds, collected my gear, and curled up beneath the pillow beside her. I wept myself to sleep, a very deep and hard sleep that prevented me from waking when she rolled her perfect, leviathan form off the mattress. Instead, I slept until she woke me again, at which point my self-loathing had abated just enough to shut my mouth. At first opportunity I scrambled upon her massive ass and sought out the scene of my crime. Against all odds, it appeared to be healing well enough, so I merely dressed the wound and gave it every advantage.

Today I would not be able to find the site of my violation. I have never brought it up to her, and until now I have never permitted myself to recall the incident.

I’m shaken as I complete my rounds, plucking out the ingrown hairs, constricting the blackheads until the pop out against my cheek, slicing the whiteheads and flushing everything out with peroxide. My Q-tip spear is destroyed, my pants are a starchy, flaking mess, and the burden of my distant guilt breaks my shoulders.

But my World’s ass is beautiful. It is clear and smooth, soft and spherical. Without question it is better than I found it. I’m long past the need to kneel and kiss the immense hillsides of buttocks: it is quite enough for me to regard my work with pride, to know her ass has been buffed and smoothed with a colossal love larger than ten of her.

Assiduously I inspect my ambit—her fundament.

Briefly, I grimace to think that under that beautiful, brown butter skin, my seed has bioassimilated and become part of one otherwise pristine buttock. She will never understand the gravity of my debt to her, the urgency of this penance I enact eagerly, happily every night.

This is the best blog entry in the history of yesterday’s Internet. No matter how far and wide anyone might search, they’ll find none better.

I like how he knows he’s the best, and no one can take his place. That’s a findamental certainty that’s beyond appealing in a tiny man. He knows his role, and he’s digested the influence of it. He’s not stupid: He knows that the nillions of people that inhabit this sack of dirt might laugh at his duties, but to him they mean everything. That kind of conviction is the stuff that moves universes.

Your descriptions of his tools was fantastic as well. I could smell the chrome, the fraction of metal, the edges made sharp just for her. His dragging a vat of peroxide on his back like the burden of penance was also… what? Religious, it felt. Like weight flagelation. And for good reason, it turned out.

His completed tasks made her life better. No woman wants to look in the mirror, turn delicately and find some unseemly red blotch on any surface of her skin. He made it so she didn’t have to go through that. The fact that she gave him that job and he completes it every night is the very definition of love. No matter what her outward appearance, she’ll keep him forever, and keep him longer than she might keep any other “guardian”.